Good morning everyone. I am so happy to welcome you all for today’s Holy Mass. My special welcome is to all our parishioners, visitors and every one who is here today. Dear friends, every time we come to Church, we celebrate the forgiveness of our Lord Christ and we hear Christ saying that there is no sin that cannot be forgiven by God Almighty and every time we come to Church we are given the blessing to forgive one another and find God in them.
Once a woman got a major stroke and ended up in the hospital and while she was in the operation theater, she prayed to God saying, “God, am I done? Please help me, I am only forty” Then God appeared to her and said, “you have forty more years to live and do not be worried”. When she knew that she was going to live forty more years, she got Extreme make over, she got a new look and facial lift and so on but think two months, she had an accident and died. She was not happy and when she went to heaven. She looked at God and said, “God, you said I got forty more years to live and I spent all my money and had an extreme make over but how come my life was over within two months”. God looked at her and said, ‘I am sorry I did not recognize you”.
Today we celebrate the third Sunday in Lent. This Sunday invites us to change within. It is easy to change our look, our body and style but not our inner look.
And that is why we all fall again and again the same kind of sin and ended up with the same kind of thoughts and ideas. We promise to ourselves saying, “ I will never do this again and within a week or two, we do the same thing”. Our human nature is so fragile and weak; it can easily be tempted and be tested. And that is during this season of Lent, we are invited to reexamine ourselves before God.
In today’s John’s Gospel, Jesus after performing His first miracle in Cana of Galilee comes to Jerusalem the Holy City. He comes to the temple to worship His Father and preach the good News to people. But before entering into His father’s house, He saw people destroying the temple with cattle, sheep and doves and other animals and accumulating the temple with unwanted things. Because of the animals and things, people’s minds were taken away from God and other holy things. They were buying and selling; talking and making business in the temple.
He then asked the people to take everything out and make the temple holy and thus find God who sent them here. There the Pharisees and the scribes and the sellers and buyers asked Jesus, “Who gave you authority to do all these?” Jesus says destroy the temple and I will build it up in three days”. In His very answer, everything changed. He asked the people not only keep the temple holy and also the body. When we keep our body pure and holy, we will find God. Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
When we drop certain things from within, then we will find God and invite holy things to live in us. One day a man went to a spiritual Master and said, ‘Master, I want to find God. I want to find spiritual things and I want to find holiness in live. Please help me so that I will find God in everything” the master who listened to him said, ‘when you drop the I, then you find God in everything”.
Yes, God can easily be found when we learn to drop the I ness in us. When we lose our selfishness and ego; our possessiveness and self-concern, there we will find God. Yes, we have to find a way to chase the animals that are living in us and then we find God.
Once a man went to a spiritual master and said, “ master, I spent so many hours reading spiritual books and the holy bible but still I could not learn more about God” the master looked at him and said, “ sit in your cell still and the cell will teach you everything”.
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